Friday, September 04, 2009

Income mobility and income structure

A chewy piece from Professor Perry about the widely-held perception that the American middle class has essentially gotten nowhere since 1980. The research he discusses purports to show that large numbers of individuals have moved up and down between income brackets.

Elsewhere, I've read that the middle earning bracket as a whole has not advanced, and the top end has become wildly richer. But if individuals can progress up this ladder, does it matter that the gap between the rungs has stretched?

3 comments:

  1. Paddington5 September 2009 at 00:54

    Much of the upward mobility was made possible by taking ever bigger mortgages.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sackerson5 September 2009 at 07:31

    But for the brackets to remain the same, others must have moved down.

    I guess I'm asking, does inequality matter, per se?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Paddington8 September 2009 at 13:58

    Sackerson - in my view (I am not competitive), inequalities don't matter as much, as long as most have enough.

    ReplyDelete

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